The Complaints Snapshot identifies the major themes of consumer complaints submitted to the Commission during the year.
The Commission releases the annual snapshot to give consumers and businesses insights into consumer complaints during the financial year (1 July to 30 June).
Complaints inform the guidance and resources the Commission develops to help consumers and businesses, and the advice it gives to policy makers about the laws we enforce.
A complaint does not necessarily mean the law has been broken and larger industries are likely to generate more complaints because they have many more customers.
We cannot investigate everything and so we focus on issues relevant to the laws that we enforce that are likely to impact consumers and markets the most. We do not resolve private disputes. If complaints do not relate to the laws that we enforce, we often refer them to other agencies.
The 2020/21 snapshot of consumer complaints to the Commerce Commission shows little variation in the number of complaints, down just 22 from the previous year.
As in previous years, most of the complaints received in 2020/21 related to the Fair Trading Act. There were 8,792 complaints relating to the Fair Trading Act, 331 relating to the Commerce Act and 273 relating to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act.
